The Western Region (WR) of the National Weather Service (NWS) has been very active in the customization and localization of AWIPS to meet the requirements of forecasters in its Weather Forecast Offices (WFOs) and River Forecast Centers (RFCs). To this end, the WR has been very active in getting supplemental satellite data into AWIPS via the Local Data Acquisition and Dissemination (LDAD) system.

In 1997 AWIPS began to be deployed to all NWS WFOs, all WR WFOs had AWIPS by 1999. AWIPS allowed for the ingest and display of digital satellite data. However, the early versions of AWIPS were only supplied with the basic image data from GOES (VIS, IR, WV). At the present time only GOES derived product imagery (DPI) has been added to the standard delivery of satellite data to AWIPS. To alleviate this problem, WR developed a method to easily ingest digital satellite imagery from various sources into AWIPS. The data is retrieved from the various sources, reformatted to be compatible with AWIPS, and then sent to all 24 WR WFOs using ldm and the LDAD system. AWIPS menus were modified to make the data displayable. The data currently being sent to all 24 WR WFOs includes: GOES DPI (total precipitable water, lifted index, cloud top pressure, CAPE, total ozone, and the fog/reflectivity product), SSM/I products (ocean surface wind speed, total precipitable water, and rain rate), AMSU products (total precipitable water, rain rate, cloud liquid water, and snow cover), GOES sounder imagery (6.5um, 7.0um, 7.4um, 11um, 13.4um), global composite IR and WV, POES sea surface temperatures, QuikSCAT ocean surface winds, and GOES high density winds.

Examples of how these data sets are displayed in AWIPS will be shown. Also, instances will be shown in which these data had an impact on the services provided by the WR WFOs.